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FISHEYE SKATESHOP ROMA What is the drug skate? AD 2018

(Versione italiana di seguito)

In the tenebrous 90’s, Rome was still dozing off in its post-80’s hangover. The future protagonists of our chronicle were still asleep in their bedrooms upholstered with posters from Cioè magazine, coming home no later than 10pm, often in barely-concealed lysergic states of mind. Others (very few), wearing bulky Nike Pumps or velcro Adidas shoes, were pioneering skateboarding.

But a young visionary, probably half-knocked-out (and therefore, inspired) by his continuous descents into clubs such as the Insomnia, or the Cyborg in Perugia, decided to democratise the wheeled board – or rather, to make it endemic. Shortly after, among the crashed and damaged scooters waiting to be repaired in Vicolo del Leopardo, our friend Dudu began his revolution in the first incarnation of the Fisheye shop: a half-hidden hole were the luckiest could encounter, perhaps on a boring tuesday afternoon, a then-still-budding Ciolella bent over the turntable, immersed in a vicious mix while his eyes gazed beyond infinity.

The epidemic caught on almost right away, thanks to the aggressive and scrupleless lifestyle marketing that suited a young, altered mind. Wheeled boards began darting down the streets of Rome. The dry, muffled sounds of well-landed tricks became almost deafening as it resounded throughout the marble city, covering the devilish echo of the “non è la Rai” jingle. Truckloads of preppy boys from the Parioli neighbourhood would ball up their Burberry jackets to ollie them, or would slide down the wooden banisters of their bourgeois lobbies, prompting the rage of sly and idle concierges with rude manners. Tons of metalheads slipped out of their Bacillario black boots and into Vans or All Stars, invading futuristic architecture of the Eur, with thanks to Il Duce for perhaps the only good legacy he left behind, and speeding at 180 km/h among the white, levigated marble. Coke-head housewives were spotted tumbling down Boccapaduli on their sons’ skateboards, at speeds never before reached by Italian stay-at-home moms. Kids of all ages no longer cared for bicycles, rollerskates & co. : Skateboard, for them, was not a passing fashion or religious cult, it was simply an extension of their bodies, a necessary evolution, a newly gained awareness of their unique idea of movement.

In less than fifteen years, the little Fisheye shop had spread its seed around half of the globe. Its black and yellow stickers would wear out against the lower face of skateboards, whose owners spread from Thailand to Canada. The friction of the buffer-pads almost seemed to whisper “Fisheye” in the urban jungles of the civilized world. Despite having reached a total monopoly of the wheeled counterculture with Fisheye, its owner can be seen to this day, by the traveller who happens to stroll through Trastevere in Rome, at work in his shop, explaining some kid the best way to hold a grip, with a red-and-yellow radio cackling foulmouthed words in the background.